Conventional LED light engines are programmable and require a variety of parameter settings (e.g., drive current etc.) for the related LED drivers. However, to be optimized for maximum utility, different LED light engines require different settings. Accordingly, unique operational settings, and other information relevant to operation of the LED light engine, must be catalogued, tracked, and made readily available.
During manufacture and deployment of LED light engines, tracking and monitoring inventory can be particularly challenging given the unique nature of each light engine. Additionally, the LED semiconductor dies may also have different characteristics and operational settings, such as part number, voltage binning, and color binning etc.
When considering LED operation at the light engine level, a variety of other characteristics become relevant. By way of example, these other characteristics can include the current level for which the light engine is designed, the expected luminous flux, and the number of serial LEDs. A few other characteristics include the number of LEDs in parallel, and the type of fixture into which the light engine will ultimately be affixed, heat sinking requirements, etc. This wide variety of characteristics highlights the challenges of tracking and matching different types of LEDs. These challenges are also highlighted through use of different light engines, and their respective optimal settings. This ultimately complicates the process of programming individual light engines for optimal performance.
Conventional solutions to these challenges include using stickers with barcodes. However, these solutions are inefficient and consume too much of the physical space on the light engine. Additionally, multiple barcodes are typically required for the volume of data stored on LED Light engines. The requirement of multiple barcodes further complicates the physical space limitation and requires time to read. More fundamentally, these stickers can be easily lost or damaged.